


The Spider, the Snake, the Scared

by Waterloo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Regulus Black, Character Death, Character Study, Family, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Mythology References, Non-Chronological, POV Regulus Black, Regulus Black Feels, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Young Sirius Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21816886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waterloo/pseuds/Waterloo
Summary: Regulus Black is just a second son. He speaks when spoken too, he shuts up when dismissed.But beneath his bed he hoards stacks of stolen muggle library books. He thinks about Greek myths. He plans the deaths of tyrants.Everyone has a story to weave.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 201





	The Spider, the Snake, the Scared

**Author's Note:**

> Very rough! Wrote this to get juices flowing so I can finally finish my other fics. Ya know how it is.  
> Sorry I'm obsessed w Arachne and with Regulus sooooo. I basically took every fact we know about Reg and extrapolated to the max like.... Oh he stole that locket? Guess my boys just got a thing for thievery.  
> Sorry not sorry.  
> List of quote attributions at end  
> Please comment even to tell me its shit!  
> Merry holidays

> _"Live on then, and yet hang, condemned one, but, lest you are careless in future, this same condition is declared, in punishment, against your descendants, to the last generation!" After saying this she sprinkled her with the juice of Hecate's herb, and immediately at the touch of this dark poison, Arachne's hair fell out. With it went her nose and ears, her head shrank to the smallest size, and her whole body became tiny. Her slender fingers stuck to her sides as legs, the rest is belly, from which she still spins a thread, and, as a spider, weaves her ancient web."_

  * _Ovid, **The Metamorphosis** _



This is how they told him the story:

Arachne was the best. Arachne knew she was the best. Arachne was even better than the gods.

And Arachne still lost.

This is what he learns from the story:

No one ever wins.

He isn't sure this is what they meant to teach.

Regulus Black knew four languages by his fourth birthday, and seven by his sixth.

Regulus Black was a bona fide child prodigy. A young genius. Smarter than the crack of his father's whip.

Regulus Black was the second son.

"We're so proud of our son" His mother says when Sirius gets an 8/10 on his Latin vocabulary test.

"You're carrying on this families name" His father says when Sirius comes second in a Broom racing competition.

When Regulus gets full marks on his test, when he comes first in every race, when he always achieves to his fullest--they give him a tight smile and a nod.

He doesn't hate Sirius. Sirius always cheers for him and asks the house elves to make his favourite dinner and tells him he's brilliant. He doesn't hate Sirius. 

But sometimes in the dark of his ice-box room when he's being trying to fall asleep for hours and all of the awful things of his existence are writing themselves across the ceiling he's staring at and he wants to sob or scream but can't decide which and knows no one will care-

He wishes Sirius were cruel. He wishes he could hate him.

When Regulus gets his Hogwarts letter he doesn't tell his parents for a week. They forget to ask.

Sirius' letter is in a gold frame next to their father's desk.

"Reg" Sirius says in his cold voice.

He still calls him Reg, but now it's in a demeaning way. As if Sirius didn't call him that when he was five and crying from the pain of a whipping and Sirius held him under the dusty blankets of a spare bedroom until he stopped crying.

"Reg" Seven year old Sirius had said "Reg. I wish it had been me"

Fifteen year old Sirius is a birch tree. Thin and looming and beautiful in a sharp way. Barren trees in weak winter sun. His shirt is wrinkled and un-tucked, collar popped. His shoes are scuffed.

Thirteen year old Regulus pressed all of his shirts at four AM that morning in another bout of insomnia-induced productivity. He has four pairs of identical shoes all immaculately polished.

Sirius' tie is red and gold and Regulus' is green green green. Green like their whole childhood was. Green like the storm broiling in Regulus' stomach. Silver like Sirius' birch tree limbs.

"Reg" Sirius sneers at him coolly. Then he walks past with out another word and all of his friends trail behind him like ducklings and Regulus fists his hands into the front of his perfect shirt until it creases.

"Do you think mother and father are in love?" Regulus asks. He's nine and he knows the answer but he wants Sirius' opinion anyway.

There are no mummy's or daddy's in Grimmauld place. Reg hasn't tried to call his mother anything but that since he was three and she made him wash his mouth out with soap for being improper and childish.

Sirius shrugs, flopped lengthwise on the chaise-lounge like a dead fish. Sirius is never proper and he is constantly childish and he has never had to wash his mouth with soap.

"Don't be an idiot, Reg" He says even though Regulus has done better than Sirius on ever test they've ever done "No one we know has ever been in love"

Regulus let's the subject drop. First he thinks;

_Yes. That isn't our way._

Then he feels silly for being ostentatious.

Regulus likes to pretend he is in a Jane Austen novel. 

Regulus likes to hide Austen novels under his bed. He gets them from the British library and confunds the librarian so he never has to take them back or show a library card.

He stacks them behind his stolen pile of copies of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and between the Shakespeare and Conan Doyle. He has seven different copies of "Importance", each with a different faded cover jacket and a stamp that proclaims it property of the British Library.

But he likes Austen best even though she's for girls.

He likes to imagine that he's a Darcy or a Colonel Brandon. Obtuse and silent and misunderstood. Still waters running deep. Unintelligible except to the caring eye that loves enough to look close.

He is seventeen and beginning to think he likely has a career in being a brooding romantic figure. 

He also has a mark on his arm. He has to read with long sleeves on so he doesn't keep catching glimpses of it.

It's ugly. But Austen and Shakespeare and Wilde aren't.

Regulus' half birthday will be in four days. He will be eighteen-years-and-six-months old. 

He would have been eighteen-years-and-six-months old. 

As he drowns he thinks about tenses. He thinks about the Chinese languages that have no tenses at all--that stretch on forever sideways and back ways and all ways. The gap in a defined world. 

He drowns and he thinks about the drowned and about drowning and about the moment all the tenses stop. 

He drowns. 

At Father's funeral they read Auden, which Regulus thinks is gauche. But Auden was one of the few wizard poets and mother thinks Swinburne is too flowery and no one consulted Regulus about it anyway. 

"Stop all the clocks" His uncle says. 

Reg thinks about how he wishes Sirius was here. He thinks about the day he found his father dead in the study. 

_Heart failure_ said the autopsy. 

_Failure to comply_ Regulus thought. 

He thinks about the green light he'd seen under the study door. About the hand his mother had placed on his shoulder as he'd gone to intervene. About the purse of her lips. 

"Think, Regulus" She'd said. And a day later she'd sent the dark Lord a simpering letter about her loyalty to the cause. About their vaults loyalty to the cause. 

"Stop all the clocks" His uncle, who Regulus is almost certain cast the spell, reads. 

Regulus thinks, _please_. He thinks about stopping them till it was just that second before the green light. Until he could crush that one single second in on itself, until it had consumed itself. An ouroboros of a moment, eating itself forever. 

He chokes on the still air of the stale church. 

The first time he reads the story of Arachne and her tapestry it's for his Latin tutor. He has to translate it to English, then back again without the original text. 

He hardly thinks about the task. Instead he reads Ovid's metamorphosis cover to cover and then again, then he reads it once in Russian and once in French because he loves those languages best. 

But he still thinks of Arachne the most. 

Arachne who had beaten a god at her own game, and insulted the rest of the gods while doing it. Arachne who had weaved Zeus' many shames into a thing of such beauty Athena was forced to tear it apart in anger. 

Ovid said Arachne hanged herself for the shame. Regulus thinks she must have hanged herself over the realisation that she lived in an unfair world. That you could be the best and still have no power at all.

Arachne won and she died for it and Athena probably didn't give a single thought to her after she cast one of Hecate's spells on her. Perhaps she laughed every time she saw a dangling spider. Perhaps she crushed the insect beneath her divine feet and tore through its web as she tore through Arachne's. 

Regulus thinks it more likely that she never thought of her at all. Where was the need in thinking about people you could destroy in an instant? To Athena, there was no difference in Arachne before or after the spell. Just a nuisance to flatten beneath your weight. 

Regulus thinks about Arachne a lot. Every time he sees a spider he nods at it, like he's saluting a magpie. He nods and he thinks 'I see you'. 

He thinks about Arachne and he thinks about tyrants and he thinks about having no choices, not really, because there is always going to be someone above you that decides they want you gone. 

So you go. 

Sirius is sorted into Gryffindor, of course. It is not an _of course_ before it happens, but it becomes one after. It is not an _as expected_ before it happens, but Regulus thinks of it as such anyway. Sirius is sorted into the house of the brave and reckless and it fits so well into the tapestry of Regulus' life that he questions why he never thought it was going to happen before. 

It becomes a thing that would always have happened. Of course. 

One year later Regulus sits beneath the hat himself. He is too small, has been too small his whole life, and Bella calls him shrimp and throws prawns at him over the dinner table. 

His sorting is an _of course_. He hardly even takes notice of the event himself. 

The hat sits on his head and it says _"Ah"_ and then it is silent for a while. 

The silence echoes in Regulus' brain like an apology and he wonders what the old hat is so sorry about. 

Then it shouts out Slytherin. Of course. 

"Narcissa is the first new name on this damned tapestry in generations" Andromeda says, running her hands along the thread, still golden though the rest of the tapestry has begun to dull. Moss green leaves fading into bottle green swirls fading into a washed-out royal blue background. Half-lustrous red roses and marigolds float on top, disjointed. The whole thing is half-hearted, but the names shine. 

His is the last. 

Regulus Arcturus Black. 

He is twelve and Sirius is spending the summer at the Potters and Andromeda, seven years his senior, has decided to spend the summer with him. Or at least at their house. Regulus doesn't blame her for wanting to escape her house which is pungent with the anger of Uncle Cygnus' new mistress and Bella's failed Newts. So it is Regulus and Andromeda. Kreacher simpers in the corner when he isn't doing chores or cowering at his fathers feet. 

Andromeda is simmering with anger, too. She doesn't take it out on him and she doesn't offer up an explanation so Regulus doesn't ask. 

"Maybe they ran out of stars" Regulus suggests halfheartedly. 

Andromeda snorts "Just like our lot to exhaust even the sky for their own benefit" 

Regulus laughs even though he shouldn't and 'Dromeda smiles at him indulgently. 

"Maybe Aunt Druella just liked the name" Regulus suggests. 

Andromeda's face falls and her gaze snaps back to the tapestry. She's looking at a struck-off member. A legacy reduced to a scorch mark the size of a cigar end. Name lost to the family.

"No one in this family ever does anything out of _like"_

"You're such a spoiled brat" Sirius spits, and a glob of blood flies and falls on Regulus' shoes. He tries not to flinch. "Why don't you come out from behind mummy's skirts, eh? Why don't you ever stand up for anything?" 

Regulus did not split Sirius' lip, Snape did. Regulus had simply stepped in to try and derail a set of detentions and the deduction of points. 

Obviously his brother had not left it at that. 

Regulus can't remember the last time they spoke. Sirius left last summer. He never wrote. 

Regulus wrote but he never sent the letters. He keeps them pressed between pages of stolen Oscar Wilde like dead flowers. They droop with his anger and with his hate and with his longing. 

The house has always been empty, even when full of people. But without Sirius it is vacuumous. 

"Sirius" Regulus says, and that's all he says. 

Sirius face is dull of twisted rage. It is almost Shakespearean. Regulus imagines him a raging Mercutio, mad with Verona and with Romeo and with the whole damnable world. _Why the devil came you between us?_ he imagines him screaming. _I_ _was hurt under your arm._

"Sirius" He says again, and he knows he sounds cold. Regulus doesn't spill emotion when it floods him, he dams it. He barricades it behind his ribs. 

"You're a coward, Regulus" Sirius snarls, blood spraying. Coating every word "You'll always be a coward" 

Sirius leaves. He leaves and Regulus watches. Snape has long ago slithered away, ungrateful for any help even when it comes form a friend. 

_Courage, man;_ Regulus tells himself, scuffing at the blood on his shoe. _The hurt cannot be much._

In Regulus' third week of second year he finds a book down the velvet green cushions of a settee. It's the one in the corner of the common room that no one ever sits on because it's drafty. 

The book is a copy of Walden, by Thoreau. Regulus knows it must be a muggle book because he does not know this Thoreau at all. He reads the first sentence. By midnight he hasn't moved in hours and the book is three thirds gone. He stays up until he finishes it, then he tucks it into his back pocket and takes it to his dorm. 

It's the first thing Regulus ever takes for himself and doesn't feel guilt over. The first thing he did that could have him burned from that tapestry. Ripped away as Athena ripped away her fathers stained legacy. 

Regulus reads a book he isn't supposed to and when he reads a certain line he stares at it a long time and then he stares into the fire a long time too, until the fire has danced into unknown spectres upon the film of his eyes. 

_The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation._

_Quiet desperation_ , Regulus thinks, and he burns the thought on to his retinas. 

He decides to betray the Dark Lord the day after he receives his mark. He begins to do something about it seven month later. 

The man tortures a girl of only five to death. He laughs after. The room is silent for a moment, and then half the room joins in out of fear. 

Regulus laughs too, for himself and for the world and out of sorrow, and he thinks: 

_I'm going to kill you. You sick bastard. I am going to kill you._

Regulus doesn't know if he decides for the little girl or if he decides because of the laugh. 

He procrastinates a week longer, for he is a coward at heart, and then Kreacher comes home sobbing. 

Regulus finds a kitten when he's ten. He calls it Arachne, of course, because it's all black like a spider. Because she's small and fierce. 

She's crushable, too. 

Regulus learns this two days later when his mother finds the kitten in his wardrobe. 

He didn't talk to Kreacher for a week for letting that secret go. 

They're two of the happiest days of Regulus childhood and so when he looks at the scars on his stomach he only feels sorrow for the kitten, not for the choice. 

Regulus writes the letter long before he crafts the fake locket to put it in. It takes him one draft, and then he never reads it again. 

_To the Dark Lord_

_I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more._

_R.A.B_.

He is brave enough to write it. He is cowardly enough to sign it with only his initials. 

The last birthday Regulus spends with Sirius is his thirteenth. They eat cake on the astronomy tower, a quick half hour party between Regulus' Quidditch practice and Sirius' detention. 

"Why did you have to charm that ink?" Regulus asks as he accepts Sirius' wrapped gift. 

Sirius just laughs. "Never mind. Go on. Open it" 

Regulus rips off the lumpy wrapping paper. It's a book. He turns it over. It's a play. 

_The Importance of Being Earnest_ by Oscar Wilde. Regulus has never heard of him. 

"This is muggle" He breathes, heart hammering with fear and also with joy. With the absolute mix of the both that comes with being seen. Stripped clean to the bone. 

"I've seen the great stack you've already got under your bed" Sirius says quietly "You're going to get some pretty hefty library fines by the way" 

Regulus knows he should rage. Toss the book over the railings of the tower. Spit on it and declare it mudblood scum. 

He clutches it to his chest. He doesn't say thank you because he's fighting hard to hold back tears. Sirius doesn't seem to mind. In fact he hugs him as he leaves for his detention. 

It's the last hug Regulus remembers. 

It's the only copy of the play he didn't steal. 

He begins to collect the information in his sixth year, after an older Nott has insinuated a few too many times that the Dark Lord has his eye on him. 

News paper clippings and journal articles and pieces of gossip he writes down. Old school records and the statements of ghosts. The Grey Lady screeches when he tries to talk to her, but he gets half the story from a loquacious fool on the third floor corridor. He learns other things too, from Myrtles screeching and from sitting through too many of Slughorn's laments on the brilliant students he's helped shape who still write him.

He learns and he records. 

_The object of power is power._ Regulus thinks to himself as he tacks up newspaper clippings to his walls and plays at being a good little obsessed follower. _Now you begin to understand me._

"Kreacher" He says, voice ice. He rocks the poor animal in his lap even as he still sobs. Great wails of anguish against Regulus' pressed shirt "Kreacher. I'm sorry" 

The elf wails and wails and Regulus thanks Merlin that every room in this house is individually silenced. Then he does something unforgivable. 

"Kreacher I order you to stop crying" The elves wails abruptly cutting off is almost worse than the sound itself. "Now. I need you to tell me everything that happened. Again" 

The first language Regulus learned wasn't English. It was German because the nanny was German. No one else ever spoke to him. Sirius was too young or kept pride of place. His mother stayed well away. Regulus stayed tucked away in the top-floor nursery, being sang to sleep by Greta. 

He'd demanded the _"kleinen stern"_ song in the presence of his mother. Greta had been promptly fired and a new, English nanny had been hired. 

It's strange. Regulus hardly remembers a word of the language now. 

He still remembers the gashes on Greta's cheeks. He remembers her tongue on the nursery floor. 

It's the first thing he remembers, actually. 

The first sip of the potion tastes like strong whiskey. He takes a gulp, and it tastes as though he swallowed that whiskey with a grated throat. 

The third swallow is when it begins to taste like poison. 

After the second cup Kreature has to hold his mouth open, pouring the potion down his throat as both of them sob. Regulus is on his knees. Kreature still has to levitate himself to reach. 

In the midst of the scraping pain, he grasps at a fleeting thought that they probably look ridiculous. It's probably funny. 

In the midst of the gushing agony, he sees Sirius. 

"Little brother" The apparition says, in French "Why are you here little brother? Why this?" 

Regulus screams out a mouthful of poison and it dribbles down his shirt, leaving stains and smouldering holes. 

"Now, now" Sirius says, and even though he can't be here, he _can't,_ it sounds just like him and Regulus chokes his way through the next mouthful. "You spent so long pressing that shirt. Wouldn't want to ruin it now. At the end" 

Regulus shakes his head. He claws at the stone floor. When he catches a glimpse of his hands he sees they're scraped raw at the finger tips. 

"Master" Kreacher croaks "Master. _Please_ " 

"Go on little Reggie" Sirius says serenely "Drink up like a big boy" 

And its the calmness that snaps Regulus out of it. Because Sirius may be a prick but he was a passionate prick, at all times. 

So Regulus drinks the next cup, and the next and though Sirius watches he doesn't say anything. He remains only a faded spectre in Regulus' periphery. 

When he's finally done, when he feels he has burned a thousand holes into his oesophagus and marinated his blood stream in the awful poison, he gets Kreature to help him stand. 

He swaps the lockets himself. If it is the only thing he will ever do, then he will do it himself. By his own hands. 

Regulus sinks to his knees as soon as the task his done. Blood swims in front of his eyes and claws its way up his throat. 

"Do you remember that story?" Illusion Sirius asks, as if they're at a dinner party "The one about the spider?" 

Regulus chokes a bloody laugh at the cavern ceiling. As if he ever forgot. 

  
  


"Sirius" Regulus asks, voice lilting up in a question "Who do you think would win in a fight between the gods?" 

Their tutor left the room five minutes earlier. Regulus thinks maybe he's talking to the new scullery made they hired to help Kreature. 

"Hm" Sirius ponders thoughtfully from where he's scribbling into a copy of _The Metamorphosis._ "That one's easy. Zeus" 

Regulus frowns. The silence drifts on. Sirius is unaware- he's drawing moustaches on all of the copperplate illustrations. Regulus watches him draw a beard on Aphrodite. Sirius would have died easily in ancient times--executed for mocking a god for sure. Sirius would probably still go on laughing through the hanging anyway. 

"No" Regulus says suddenly, stopping the silence in its tracks. 

Sirius looks up, confused, earlier conversation already forgotten. 

"I don't think Zeus would win. Athena would" 

"But she's a girl" Sirius says with disdain. Sirius hates all of their cousins except Andromeda and he still acts as if he'll catch a deadly disease every time he has to sit next to her for a portrait. 

"She'd win" Regulus says decidedly. 

"How can you be so sure?" Sirius says, looking interested as if Regulus knows something he doesn't. 

Regulus thinks about Arachne, as he is want to do multiple times a day. He thinks about her hanging and the humiliation she had been gifted even in death. 

"Because she sees the whole world as smaller then her" Regulus says "because that makes it easier for her to be cruel" 

Sirius looks at him, brow furrowed, for a long time. 

"Careful Reggie" He says "You sound like a Ravenclaw" 

Then he goes back to filling in Artemis' mono-brow. 

The hands pull him into the lake. He can't see Sirius anymore. Kreature is screaming and then suddenly gone. Disapperated. 

It is a kinder death than the Dark Lord means it to be. The poison dulls the biting cold of the lake. Dulls the awareness of the hands that grip at him, bloated skin on long dead bodies. 

Regulus' hands stain the water they float in red. Tendrils of blood escape to the surface just like the bubbles from his mouth and nose.

He isn't sad. He isn't scared. 

He thinks of the weaver, dying out of shame. He thinks of the Arachne in his mind, the one he's lived with his whole life. 

The one who died in the face of tyranny. In the face of a system that would always cheat. Who hanged herself out of fear of the truth. 

Regulus doesn't think it's a bad way to go; to die a braver death than that of a Greek Myth. To die doing something. Perhaps they will turn his body into a fish. 

_…. the rest is belly……. from which she still spins a thread….._

He laughs. It comes out in a last bubble which pops on the surface of the now still black lake. Water chases in to fill its absence. 

Regulus Black dies facing an unfair world. He dies to spite it. 

He has a plan. He will defeat the dark Lord. Perhaps it will take years, maybe decades of his life. Perhaps he will be an old man before he succeeds. He's only seventeen; he has the decades to spend. 

But he has a plan for after. Even if he's old and decrepit by then. 

He will kill the dark Lord and then he will go and live in the wilderness. Like Walden. 

He'll take Kreature and his books. He'll let the spiders fill the corners of his cabin with tapestries of silk. He'll never break a single thread spun. He'll write to Sirius maybe, ask him about that half-blood boyfriend of his. 

Yes. He will kill the Dark Lord and then he will go live in the woods to live _deliberately_. 

The thought cheers him. He stares at the ceiling of his bedroom and instead of the usual deluge of thoughts about his regrets, he thinks of the future. 

Surely one day he will win. 

> _"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."_

  * _Henry David Thoreau, **Walden** _



  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> First and last quote obviously listed.  
> "Stop all the clocks" is from the poem by the same name by W H Auden  
> "Why the devil came you....... under your arm."  
> And "the hurt cannot be much" are both from act 3 of romeo and juliet  
> "Mass of men lead lives of quiet" desperation is from Walden by  
> "the object of power is power" "now you begin to understand me" are from 1984 by George Orwell  
> Thanks for reading


End file.
